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 Fanny, isn't it? You contesting every inch and I longing to grow old beautifully"

"And murdering," said Fanny intensely, "smothering your youth!"

Gilda began to laugh. "I don't think you're right in saying that Archie and Laura live—just negatively. They are a great deal more than not dead. And you're very sweeping, Fanny; nobody likes to be dismissed as incomplex. Archie is a man of action, strenuous in his mind, and Laura is reposeful—which needs energy. That is why we love her."

"Yes, don't we," said Fanny generously, "but we can't think how it's done."

"Oh, all big things are reposeful," said Gilda; "look at the beech-trees."

"I am a very wiry Scotch fir," said Fanny with relish. "I stand against the skyline and cry out for gales. When they come I ecstasise. Gilda, you are a larch tree planted in a windy place. You look down and think you long for a valley but every inch of you undulates. In a calm you'd go quite limp. You in a calm!"

"It's all I want," said Gilda. She raised her